Key Dates

On 12 September 1941, the first Jewish slave labourers were brought to the Nord Pas de Calais, to construct the Lindemann Batterie near to Sangatte.

1942

Lager Tibor, the main camp in the area, is established circa 13 June 1942. The prisoner cohort included Jews, French, Italian, Spanish and Russian prisoners.

1942

On July 14, 1942, a convoy of Belgian Jews and other nationalities were sent by the Germans, to Fort-Mahon which marks the probable establishment of the camp. From October 1942 prisoners from Merxplas jail were also sent to the camps at Fort-Mahon and at Calais.

1942

In September of 1942, 250 of the toughest of the Belgian Jews started work at Etaples performing dangerous and heavy work under aerial bombardment and were probably held at Lager Erika.

1942

Peuplingues Camp was a camp used to detain Belgian Jews, and it was operated for this purpose, from 5 October till 10 December 1942. Other prisoner groups included Belgians and French resister convicted by German military tribunals.

1942

Camp Condette was set up 13 June 1942 and was a small and initially tented, labour camp with 250 inmates.

1942

Camp Brauneck, Boulogne (College Mariette)was founded in August 1942 when a rail convoy came to this camp from Antwerp with Jewish prisoners. 350 Russian POWs also arrived in April 1943.

1942

From June 1942, to October 1942, there were a 1,200 Jews of different nationalities and a number of Belgians at Lager Tibor.

1942

The majority of Belgian Jewish Deportees only stayed for some three brief months in the Northern French Camps and were deported mainly to Auschwitz, via Mechelen, from 4 August, 1942. 97.5% died at Auschwitz.

1942

Through the summer in 1942, the Jewish labour camps, some 19 permanent camps and temporary Kommandos, were established along the Cote D'Opale, with another camp, Mazures, further south near to Charleville.

1942

The main Jewish deportations to the Pas de Calais took place over a 3 months period from 26 June 1942 onwards, mainly from Antwerp, Brussels, Charleroi and Liege.

1943

The Blockhaus d'Eperlecques (Watten) V-WEapon site was constructed from May, 1943, using a vast slave labour force, including Jews, housed in local camps.

1943

La Coupole' V2 rocket construction and launch site was constructed over 10 months, in 1943, and used a vast labour contingent which included Jews and Russian prisoners of war,

1943

During an air-raid on Calais in November 1943, about 500 inmates at the Calais Camp were killed when they were forbidden to take cover during the air-raid. Approximately 200 victims, who could be found in the rubble were buried in the Military Cemetery in Calais.

1943

Drafts of German political prisoners were sent from the Emsland group of camps in October 1943, to France,'where they engaged principally in heavy construction works VI emplacements etc.', with many based at the camp in Calais as well as at Berck-Plage and Samer.

1943

In November 1943, a contingent of French Jewish prisoners from Alderney (Aurigny) were transferred to Dannes and the same happened on 7 May, 1944, when 650 Jewish prisoners were evacuated from Alderney by boat to Cherbourg and 500 of that group were sent to Dannes.

1944

The SS Baubrigade V operated in The Nord Pas de Calais from c. March 1944. The SS Baubrigade V was based in Doullens and a sub-camp operated in Hesdin and was composed of concentration camp prisoners from Sachsenhausen, Buchenwald and Neuengamme camps and consisted of 1,995 prisoners.

1944

At the end of August 1944, with the threat of invasion, the detainees at Lager Gneisenau were sent to Samer Camp, where they were liberated by the Canadians in September 1944.

1944

There were heavy bombing raids on the camps at Camier during February, 1944, which leading to dismantlement of some of the camps by the end of the month.

1944

The end of the Lager Tibor camp came on 5 September 1944, when the Germans evacuated all of the prisoners via a train at Boulogne in order to deport the prisoners to Mauthausen and Buchenwald. However, the transport was liberated by the Belgian resistance at Dexmude.

1944

In May 1944, 650 French Jews (Jews married to Aryan women and also Half-Jews, who had been held in slave labour camps on Alderney were transported back to Nord Pas de Calais and sent to Dannes-Camier, with the older men being sent to Lager Brauneck in Boulogne.

1945

In April 1945 a transport of 350 Russians, including children, arrived from Smolensk to Lager Tibor The Germans regarded Russian boys as young as 14, as 'adults' fit for slave labour.